Plus: Praise for the director, cast, and his favorite scenes in the franchise.
Freddie Prinze Jr. has been very open about his struggles on set during the making of the original I Know What You Did Last Summer. The breakout slasher came early in his acting career, and in previous interviews, Prinze has shared that director Jim Gillespie was not his biggest fan. Prinze has previously appeared in I Know What You Did Last Summer and its sequel, I Still Know What You Did Last Summer, as all-around good guy Ray Bronson, boyfriend of final girl, Julie James. But Prinze was initially hesitant to return to Southport for a third round. “I remember when they were first talking about this movie, I was really hesitant to even be involved,” he admits.
So what changed his mind? Director Jennifer Kaytin Robinson. The two have an existing friendship, but when Robinson made the call to discuss the project, Prinze was not fully on board. Robinson offered a pitch over breakfast with a promise that the worst case scenario would be no involvement with the movie, but still winning because who doesn’t love breakfast with a friend? Once Robinson shared her vision for Southport in 2025, Prinze was hooked.
“I loved the idea so much. I loved what she did with Ray and Julieand at the same time, gave this new cast the helm. But we're not cameos. I don't want anyone to think that. Ray and Julie are major driving forces in this movie, and you somehow get time for the other people as well. Jennifer did an amazing job. Her vision of this world, which she kind of had to recreate taking from the first two movies, is so spot on from the original vision that she pitched me and that never happens.”
Admittedly, I was expecting very little screen time for our returning characters, Ray and Julie, but I can attest — these are not cameos, they are full fledged characters, heavily involved in the storyline. Prinze’s third romp in Southport ultimately led to his favorite scenes in the franchise and handled the returning characters in a way that was intriguing enough to entice his return.
“This was such a fun movie to make. The main reason for me was that Jennifer Kaytin Robinson, the director and co-writer, and the main writer, Sam Lansky, put so much thought and care into what happened to Julie and Ray. Their story talks a lot about trauma and how the same trauma can affect two people in very, very different ways if it's not dealt with properly.”
Robinson also directed Netflix’s Do Revenge, and as Prinze puts it, “Jennifer Robinson can cast a movie better than anyone out there.” When she has her sights set on an actor, she’ll go to bat for them, resulting in her ideal ensemble.
“This cast is so good, everyone's so perfect, and when she [Robinson] wants you, she fights for you. She got who she wanted in this movie. I'm 49 now. It's not hard for me to say I didn't love all the work I did when I was younger. I wasn't as good as I am now. When I did the first, I Know What You Did Last Summer, I was 20 years old, just turning 21. I had no experience, maybe a movie and a half under my belt, and was literally learning on the job. I was the least experienced of all the other actors in the movie. They were all child actors except me. It was very difficult for me to keep up.”
Walking onto the set in 2025, Prinze was immediately impressed by his young co-stars.
“When I saw this cast and they're a little older than I was, but still young, the level at which they would execute these scenes… I would go and watch scenes that I wasn't even in because they were so good. Off camera, I would see them, and the camaraderie was so tight. They really leaned on each other and depended on each other. On I Know What You Did Last Summer, I had some of that with Ryan Phillippe. I would kind of lean on him a little bit when I had a tough day on set. They all had that naturally.”
Being on the set of a teen slasher some two decades after his time on the original I Know What You Did Last Summer, Prinze also noticed some changes.
“My generation was more competitive because there weren't as many movies getting made. There were only a few studios making 15 movies a year. Now there are all these channels and all this other stuff, and people are making movies 365 days a year. It was really competitive, and I was almost surprised and shocked by how kind they were to one another. They were shocked that it wasn't like that back in the day. It was just my experience. You might talk to someone else, like, ‘No, it was great.’ But in my experience, it was a lot more competition, and it was more cutthroat.”
When it came to his co-stars, Prinze’s daughter is actually the one who initially tipped him off to the talent that he was about to encounter.
“I had to research everybody when I would see people get cast and look at their work. My daughter goes, ‘Wait, you guys cast Maddie [Madelyn Cline]? Dad, she's on Outer Banks.’ And I say, ‘Well, what's Outer Banks?’ I watched, and she was good, but I didn't know how good. We had a scene together, it was my first day on set, and she had to maintain a certain emotional level for the context of the scene for 12 hours. She did it with such elegance and such grace. I would get exhausted. After three takes, I'll be like, ‘We don't have it. What the fuck are you going to do?’ But she was just so powerful. I called my daughter, and I was like, ‘Yeah, you were right. She's the shit.’”
Prinze echoes a sentiment also shared by his three-time co-star Jennifer Love Hewitt.
“I'm so freaking proud of this movie. The first scene you see with Love and I, I think is the best scene that we have done together on camera in any of the movies. And the last scene that we have together is my second favorite scene that we've ever done in any of the movies, so I'm really pleased with the way it came out and really proud to show people what we can do.”
His two favorite scenes of all time as Ray and Julie, is saying a lot, considering this is their third outing sharing the screen as those characters. Check it out for yourself in theaters.
You can read more about IKWYDLS in FANGORIA #28 where you’ll find an awesome piece by our very own Meredith Borders AND bylines by Freddie Prinze Jr. and Jennifer Love Hewitt making their FANGORIA debuts. I Know What You Did Last Summer is now playing in theaters.
